


Congratulations – The World Hasn’t Ended Yet (Or, the X-Men Throw a Party)

by thatsrightdollface



Category: X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men Evolution
Genre: F/M, Other, and finding a sense of home, headcanons, ice cream cake, kinkos, lots of headcanons, silly sweet family stuff, talking about growing up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 14:57:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4483721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kurt Wagner got some weird looks printing out his and Kitty’s “Congratulations – the World Hasn’t Ended Yet” banners really big on garish plastic stuff, even with his image inducer on.  Looks like the people milling around Kinko’s were in a judgey sort of mood.  It was worth it, though.  Kitty had scribbled adorable, teeny versions of ne’er-do-wells they’d recently crossed swords with all over the banner, and if anyone could snicker over a swirly-eyed doodle of his supervillain mom going “Mwahaha!” it was Kurt.  </p><p>So, for my friend CytosineSkald's birthday this year, I wrote two short X-Men stories~ This is one of them, which I intended to base in the world of X-Men Evolution, a while after the series ends.   As the title says -- the X-Men throw a party.  This is intended to be a playful and family-based fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Congratulations – The World Hasn’t Ended Yet (Or, the X-Men Throw a Party)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CytosineSkald](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CytosineSkald/gifts).



Kurt Wagner got some weird looks printing out his and Kitty’s “Congratulations – the World Hasn’t Ended Yet” banners really big on garish plastic stuff, even with his image inducer on.  Looks like the people milling around Kinko’s were in a judgey sort of mood.  It was worth it, though.  Kitty had scribbled adorable, teeny versions of ne’er-do-wells they’d recently crossed swords with all over the banner, and if anyone could snicker over a swirly-eyed doodle of his supervillain mom going “Mwahaha!” it was Kurt. 

 He flashed flat-toothed, eager little smiles at people – the old woman behind the desk, peddling her Kinko’s wares; the soccer mom trying to organize her fistfuls of flyers while talking on the phone; the guy about Kurt’s age stuffing newly-printed business cards for tutoring math into his backpack.   Once upon a time, Kurt had skulked around with his hood pulled up to shadow his face far too much of the time, and he’d kept his skin tucked away as completely as possible.  It wasn’t really so long ago, actually, that Kurt could have honestly said he’d never felt comfortable eating in public, or gone swimming in a pool, or really had any friends outside of his adopted parents. 

Who would have thought things would be so much easier going by a codename like “Nightcrawler?”  He’d recently scared the crap out of some guards by pretending to be an actual demon to help his friends slip away.  Somehow, nobody that mattered was even fazed by his act, and the rest of the X-Men never brought up how good Kurt had been at playing scary.  He was grateful for that.  He didn’t talk too much about religion – and his friends were from all kinds of faiths, of course – but Kurt still wore a little silver cross under his shirt most days.  Even if he did turn out to have hellfire in his blood, he wasn’t sure he’d want to know about it.

Not that any of that mattered _today_.  Now, he hummed something Kitty would have called “old as rocks” and Professor Lehnsherr would have called “mindless noise with vapid lyrics.”  He took a peek at the list his sister Anna-Marie – Rogue to most everyone, except he liked to think it was sort of special that he knew her second name – had written up for him to take care of before the party.  

This was going to be a good day.  From the moment Rogue had shaken him awake and made fun of his bedhead, Kurt had known it was going to be a good day.  Most people didn’t get the effects of bedhead over so much of their body, but Kurt minded stuff like that less, recently.  He’d taken the list without complaint, and now he’d nearly finished all its little missions. 

 (Hopefully the ice cream cake wouldn’t be a puddle of colorful mush by the time he got back to Scott’s car.  The whole quest might not have been planned out as completely as Kurt would have liked…  Oops.  Bobby could always re-freeze any soggy cake-causalities, but after Kurt and Kitty had utterly failed at drinking slurpies in the back of that car last week Scott wasn’t likely to forgive any stickiness.)

 Anyway – there was only one more thing on Kurt’s to-do list, and then he’d head back home.  He had already gotten a few texts about getting his “furry blue butt back here.”  It was nice to be wanted.

Kurt wondered how many heroic teams wrote “Yay!  We’re not dead!” in sharpie on their party balloons.  He wondered how many roped their brooding, sullen sorts into X-Box championships – get it, X-Men playing X-Box?  Wolverine wasn’t too bad at video games, actually, though he’d recently gutted a controller with his claws in a fit of accidental survival instinct. 

Jean had come up with the idea of offering a “No One Gets to Use My Car/Other Useful Vehicles for a Month” pass as a prize for the winner of the obstacle course challenge.  She’d said it was a surefire way to get Scott and Professor Logan to play.  She was right.  Heh, maybe it would set a fire burning in Cyclops’ blood if the ice cream cake _did_ melt all over his upholstery. 

This party was part barbecue, part “Good job, guys, we made it another year” sort of deal, and partly an attempt to welcome new students.  Kurt would leave his image inducer up in his room the whole time – he’d promised Kitty, but perhaps more importantly he’d promised himself.  He would smile with long, slick fangs and maybe carry around a Febreeze can to spray everywhere in case his sulfuric entrances weren’t completely appreciated.  He’d wear his true face, and he would belong.

He’d even tried taming his hair a little bit – cutting it in a different way, like all those dapper, feisty heroes in old movies.  His adopted parents had had a limited collection of VHS tapes, see, and whenever Kurt imagined looking good – looking like he had his crap together – he usually imagined the scenarios with jaunty soundtracks, cast in those old tapes’ faded lighting.  He’d swept his bangs over his forehead a couple mornings ago just to try it out.  Hey, just go for it, he’d thought.  Why not? 

The whole thing went over better than Kurt had expected.   Kitty had shaken his shoulders, saying he was “Almost swanky, somehow” – remember when Kitty wouldn’t even look in Kurt’s eyes? – and Jean had snapped a picture for that year’s scrapbook.  Even Professor Logan had said something like, “You clean up good, Elf.”  It didn’t really matter that Kurt was posing next to a box of frosted flakes in the picture.  He still felt a little more grown up every time he passed himself in a mirror, now.  He’d even asked Professor X to adjust his image inducer.

On the topic of “growing up,” Kurt was off to the party store.  He just had to get a piñata that could be dressed up to look a little like Sabretooth – he was thinking of hunting down a Lion King themed dealie, if he could – and then it was right back home.

Might as well drop the ice cream cake off first, though – too much fire in Scott’s blood could be bad for his health, yeah?

…

Remy LeBeau stirred absently at his spicy, steaming brew, letting the heat wash over him and take him far away.  This was the same gumbo recipe his grandmother had used back when Remy was a kid, so maybe a little sprinkle of nostalgia couldn’t be helped.  If Gambit closed his too-bright, crackling eyes, he might have been able to imagine the creek of his grandparents’ porch swing, or the dull rumble of heists being planned in rooms beyond, or even the smell of the bug spray his grandmother used to soak him in way back when. 

In a way, Remy was bringing a little bit of his home here to the Xavier school just by making this old-timey dish.  Not that he’d tell anyone, mind you.  Not that he’d even tell Rogue, and she was sitting on the counter next to his stove – Gambit always thought of the stove as “his” when he was cooking – and swinging her boots against the cabinets so they rattled. 

Rogue was looking good, and of course Remy had told her so when she came striding in here.  She’d swatted at his arm, of course, but he thought she was smiling a little softer than usual.  Her lips were painted like peaches.  She was growing her hair out, Rogue said, and she’d stopped straightening it every morning – that hair fell in thick, wild curls, now, and Remy had teased her a few times about the very real danger of leaning down to laugh at one of his hilarious jokes and getting it caught in the stove-fires. 

“Just be careful, chere,” he’d said.  He kept his voice light, even if his thoughts weren’t. 

“Like any a’ your jokes could be so funny,” she’d said, with that little crinkle in her nose that meant she was insulting him _nicely_. 

She was doing that, now, actually.  She was talking about how she was going to cream him in the obstacle course competition, and he was reminding her about the time he’d trounced everyone single-handedly at basketball just a week after coming to the school for keeps.

“I still remember how you tried to catch me – like trying to catch smoke, no?  But you were fast, too, girl!  Just not fast _enough_.” 

“You were cheating,” Rogue sniffed.  “Using your mutant powers an’ whatnot.  You always cheat.”

“Not always,” Gambit said, and maybe he let his eyes linger over her a little too long, tracing freckles she used to hide behind pale powder makeup, tracing old and new scars.  Rogue snickered uncomfortably and flicked him in the arm.

“Careful,” she said.  “Better keep your eyes on the stove, Gambit.”

Not for the first time, Remy wondered when he’d ask this girl to call him by his other name, the name his dad had bellowed when he’d fled a thieving job without the right loot or failed a test because he was too busy daydreaming about Star Wars.  It’s not that “Gambit” wasn’t his real name, by this point – Remy was as much a gambit as anyone could be, he figured, and it was a good enough warning, a good enough promise, to wear that part of him in his name.  No, but this girl was the only one on the team he’d cooked for before this party, and she was a big part of why he’d signed up for the obstacle course challenge to begin with. 

Gambit knew Rogue was going to kick his ass in tonight’s game, likely as not, even if half the fun was smack-talk.  She’d helped design the course, after all, Rogue and Jean and Storm all cackling maniacally over Danger Room-esque party plans.  Or something like that.

 In a way, watching Rogue win, watching her shine, would be the best part of the night.  Rogue was raw power, when she let herself go.  There was nothing sneaky-like about her, nothing tied up in lies, or in a glinting, grimy charm.  Remy sort of looked forward to Rogue when she was all over-zealous smiles and sugar-soaked, victorious crowing.  That was why it was so easy to smirk and concede defeat to her, probably.  

Not that he’d ever _let_ her win, mind you.  Oh, no.  Rogue would have noticed, of course, and this game they played couldn’t have been as much fun without some possibility, without some _spice_.

Remy didn’t know it yet, stirring his gumbo in the steamy kitchen, one hand propped in his coat pocket, but he was definitely going to tell Rogue his older names one day.  There would come a time she’d whisper them sleepily, and he’d wonder if she was dreaming of him.  There would come times she’d hiss them furiously, times she’d just barely choke them out through laughter, times she’d remind him of them when he felt impossibly far away from himself.

But that would come later.  Gambit wasn’t going to talk about any of his older names, tonight.

He was, however, going to get a kiss on the cheek right before the obstacle course race began.  He couldn’t see it yet, but he would see it soon enough – Rogue would sidle her way up to him and press a gloved hand against his face.  She’d smack that kiss down so fast he almost wouldn’t know what was happening, and then she’d laugh it off with a little insult – “Try not to get yourself hurt in there, Gambit.  Maybe you wanna back out now?” – or something.      

But it would be too late.  It would have happened.  Gambit would brush his hand across his cheek off and on for the next little while, actually, and he’d have to be grateful if nobody noticed.

For now, Rogue was nudging his leg with her boot and telling him a story, something that had happened earlier.  Something funny with new students catching Storm and Wolverine making out in the Danger Room.  Gambit was smiling down at gumbo that meant family to him, wondering if it was hot enough – hot enough to scorch the tongue, but not hot enough to set anyone literally on fire. 

Delicate balance, that one.

…

The party happened loudly, as parties often do –people laughed and screamed and set off little confetti-poppers.  The blue teleporter played an unwelcome prank on young Mr. Summers which elicited some perturbed exclamations.   Wolverine accidentally wrecked a TV screen playing with something called an “X-Box” – Charles _was_ fond of naming things after himself, so this must have been one of his contraptions – which elicited even more. 

Erik had started out reading in his office, back turned to the windows so the light of a dying sun could drip, thick and golden, over the pages.  _The Once and Future King_ – a classic, and he’d thought it would be enough to steady his mind.  It wasn’t.  Now, he was toying with a broken watch one of the students – Danielle Moonstar? – had brought for him to fix. 

It was nice that the child trusted Erik enough to let him take a look at her watch, which was perfectly salvageable and very nice, actually, with little stones worked in around a daintily wrought face.  It was nice of Dani to treat him like a part of the faculty instead of a former “supervillain,” as coarse and inappropriate a term as that might be.  It was nice, but it wasn’t enough to bring Erik down the stairs smiling and out into the fluttering multicolored dance lights someone had rigged.  Erik had noticed the little scribble-drawings of the X-Men’s adversaries on the “Congratulations – the World Hasn’t Ended Yet!” banner, but he hadn’t lingered long enough to see if he’d been included. 

He almost didn’t want to know, if he had been.  It had been ages since he’d felt so at home somewhere, even if it was a tentative home, an almost-home, even now.  Even if not all his suitcases had been fully unpacked, yet, and even if they might remain partially-packed for months to come.

Someone knocked at Erik’s door, and at first he was prepared to ignore them.  Then, he thought better of it and called, “Yes?  Come in, please.  The door’s unlocked.”

Kitty Pryde opened Erik’s office door, and he wasn’t sure who he had been expecting.  Her hair was in curls, and she was wearing a soft blue dress.  She fumbled a little with the knob, even knowing she could phase through the homey reddish wood as easily as breathing.  She had a piece of dripping ice cream cake on a plate in her hand, and a hopeful half-smile tweaking up her lip.

“Want some cake, Professor Lehnsherr?” she said.  Not “Magneto.”  He tried to remember if he’d heard Kitty call him “Magneto,” in all the time he’d been here, and he suddenly wasn’t sure.

He decided, all of a sudden, that if she asked him to come join the party he would go, wearing a sweater instead of a cape and leaving all his excuses behind him in his office.   

(It was lucky he’d decided that, because Kurt and Kitty had already put his name down for the obstacle course race.  They also had plans to rope him into an event where all the professors made fools of themselves playing Twister.  They would have surprising luck with the first idea – the second, no dice.  Yet.)

In the meantime, it turns out the infamous, cape-wearing, shake-in-your-boots-at-the-sound-of-his-name Magneto had never had ice cream cake before.

Who would have thought?


End file.
